BLT Chicken Salad

This takes the one of the most loved sandwiches in the world and turns it into a salad! Bacon, lettuce and tomatoes are naturals with oven fried chicken, feta cheese and a peppery ranch dressing.

My winter cravings for summer food are right on time. Like clockwork every February I start craving giant dinner-size salads and fresh berries by the tub fulls.

Funny thing about the salads because when I was a kid I wouldn’t eat them. I was a picky eater to the tenth degree. I watched my family, including my younger sister, devour them with gusto while I sat there with an empty plate. I felt left out.

When I finally did work up enough nerve to put a piece of lettuce in my mouth as luck would have it there was ranch dressing all over it. Need I say more? I couldn’t stop eating! Relief. I wasn’t the odd one out anymore.

Now when I get a craving for salad I eat them twice a day for days on end until I can’t bear to even look at them. After a few days or sometimes weeks of avoidance the cycle repeats itself all over again.

I can’t think of a more delicious way to welcome salad back into my life after the long parade of soups and casseroles that have marched across my dinner table. This has all the elements I look for in a salad!

The saltiness of the bacon, the crunch and juiciness of the chicken, tangy bites of feta, the bright acidity of the tomatoes, crisp lettuce and the peppery bite of the milky dressing to tie it all together.

Combine 1/2 cup buttermilk with the egg in a shallow dish. Place bread crumbs in a separate shallow dish. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Dip each one in the egg mixture, allow excess to drip off then dredge in the bread crumbs patting on with your hands if needed. Place in the pan.